A few items of interest

Excerpt: There is stirring on the left. Now that the odds that ObamaCare will crash and burn have ticked up a notch or two, the words “single payer” are being heard more frequently. [For those who have been living under a rock, "single payer" is what we used to call "national health insurance," and before that "socialized medicine" and before that "government-provided health care," by people who today call themselves "progressives" but used to call themselves "liberals" and before that "socialists" in some cases — all in the hope that continual re-labeling will make the ideas actually seem sensible.] (In 20 years, people will tell their grandkids, “We used to have a great healthcare system, but it’s too late now to go back, even though 80% of people want to.” ~Bob.)

Excerpt: The results suggest a significant degree of "employment lock" -- workers employed primarily in order to secure private health insurance coverage. The results also suggest that the Affordable Care Act -- which similarly affects adults not traditionally eligible for public health insurance -- may cause large reductions in the labor supply of low-income adults. Indeed, the authors estimate that between 840,000 and 1.5 million childless adults in the United States currently earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line, have employer-provided insurance and are not eligible for public health insurance. Applying their labor supply estimates directly to this population, the authors predict a decline in employment of between 530,000 and 940,000 in response to this group of individuals being made newly eligible for free or heavily subsidized health insurance.

Excerpt: The ticking time bomb of entitlement reform is Social Security's Disability Insurance Fund. According to the Social Security trustees, the bomb is due to go off (when the fund, running out of money, will need to make steep cuts in benefits) just in time for the 2016 election, says Michael J. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The primary driver of surging costs in every entitlement program is not demography but rising real benefits per beneficiary. If entitlement cost growth isn't slowed soon, standard estimates imply that taxes to pay for them will eventually rise to crushing levels, sharply lowering incomes within a generation.

Excerpt: Schantag, who also is an expert on phony war heroes, said the emcee read a portion of Mohler’s biography. “Three Silver Stars, seven Bronze Star Medals for Valor, five Army Commendation Medals for Valor, two Purple Hearts.” “And that’s when everybody looked at me,” Schantag told Military.com. “He stood up in front of Gold Star mothers who lost their sons, widows who lost their husbands, and he had the nerve to stand up there in front of them with all this. Despicable is not the word.” (Say, did I tell you how I won the National Defense Medal? ~Bob)

Excerpt: Several conservative bloggers repeated talking points given to them by a proxy group for the Ukrainian government — and at least one writer was paid by a representative of the Ukrainian group, according to documents and emails obtained by BuzzFeed. (Huh. I’ll be happy to post their talking points on my blog if they pay me. But if anyone pays me to post something, I’ll tell you! ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Allen West accused the NAACP and other race-baiters of cherry picking cases for a political agenda, pointing out that they’ve been silent on two horrible cases where a white family was savagely murdered and a white baby shot in the face by two black teenagers: (I'm going to say right up front that I don't care about the death of Trayvon (where do they come up with these names?) Martin at all. He wasn't a "poor innocent black chile with a bag of Skittles" like the liberals and the liberal media have been portraying him. He was a juvenile delinquent who was repeatedly in trouble at school because of theft, fighting, and drugs. In my opinion, he would have smashed George Zimmerman's head into the pavement until he was dead, if Zimmerman hadn't shot him. He wasn't an innocent victim and isn't worthy of all the attention he is getting. Just dig a hole and bury him. Good riddance. But where is the outrage for Antonio Santiago? Remember him? The media obviously doesn't care about him. President Obama and Eric Holder obviously don't either. After all, he wasn't a "poor innocent black chile with a bag of Skittles", was he? – LLW)

Excerpt: “We are resolved, as you are, to combat violence involving or directed at young people, to prevent future tragedies and to deal with the underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common incidents. And we will never stop working to ensure that – in every case, in every circumstance, and in every community – justice must be done.” Really? “In every case, in every circumstance, and in every community?” Does Chicago count? Or just the cases that the media have twisted into racial hate crimes?

Excerpt: What Egyptian citizens must recognize is that political liberty thrives best where there's a large measure of economic liberty. The Egyptian people are not the problem; it's the environment they're forced to live in. Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt?

Excerpt: I just read this week that some parent associations across the country are now advocating for their school age children to indulge in a little daily pot smoking to calm their nerves and sooth their worries. Hey, it had to happen. I'm not surprised at all. It all began back in the 50's with the Dr. Spock "bible" on child rearing. Spock asserted that physical spanking was detrimental for the healthy child and that allowing the child to "indulge life" was a far superior technique. (Giving kids unearned self esteem is child abuse. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: That may seem unlikely to anyone who actually travels to any of the places in the world that still have slavery. They are much less concerned with media images of black people over in Mauritania which still has slavery. There’s not a lot of interest in white privilege over in Sudan, where actual genocide is still taking place. And if you get a chance, stop by Papua, where Obama’s friendly Indonesian step-folks are still killing black people.

PAKISTAN: A young woman stoned to death for having a cell phone after ruling by a Panchayat

Excerpt: Arifa, a mother of two, has been stoned to death on the orders of Panchayat (a tribal court) for possessing a cell phone. She was executed on 11 July in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province. The victim was stoned to death by her uncle and relatives on the orders of Panchayat after she was found to have a mobile phone.

Excerpt: "Teachers who teach western education? We will kill them! We will kill them in front of their students, and tell the students to henceforth study the Qur'an," he said, gesticulating energetically while dressed in military fatigues and a traditional hat.

Excerpt: It happened to a 16-year-old girl in West Seattle. She was kicked out of her house and a friend said she could stay with her and 32-year-old Yussuf Abdulle at an apartment in the 8400 block of Delridge Way SW. Investigators said Abdulle made the girls have sex with different men three to seven times a day and drugged them with marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine.

Excerpt: When, as Arabs, we see how Western society agonizes over everything concerning the legal system and the rights of the individual, we can only conclude that democracy is a recipe for self-destruction, and that the last thing we should do is adopt it. It seems obvious that we should use the West's lack of commitment to its own existence to finalize Islam's global mission. (In short, what the guy is saying is that when dealing with clever, unscrupulous, violent, mortal enemies, playing "Mr. Nice Guy" all the way is guaranteed to put you in the losing position every time. I agree 100% with this, but neither do I want us to adopt all the nasty tactics of the Bad Guys. However, I believe there's some room in between being super PC and being super nasty. And we need to very carefully consider when it is time to use more aggressive tactics. With some enemies the only thing that will get them to back away from their plans to do us harm is to be the baddest guy on the block, and as Sherman said "We cannot teach these people to love us; but we can teach them to fear us." Not a PC thought at all, but a very fitting one. --Del)

Excerpt: Unfortunately, that is exactly the opposite of what the American people will experience under the president’s healthcare law. It is neither a compassionate nor, as we have seen increasingly over the past few months, a competent way to solve America’s healthcare challenges. Its rules, regulations and mandates violate every principle of healthcare we hold dear: affordability, accessibility, quality, innovation, responsiveness and choices.

White House Has Known For Months Obamacare Implementation Wouldn't Work: Last week, it scaled back several required provisions. They aren't the first. And probably won't be the last.

Excerpt: If you've been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as designed. It has known for months. As far back as March, a top IT official at the Department of Health and Human Services said the department's current ambition for the law's new online insurance marketplaces was that they not be "a Third-World experience."

Excerpt: On 5 July, she took a train to Bamunigam, where two cousins ​​and some friends were waiting to take her home. However, rather than take her to the village of Minapanka, the men led her to a still unidentified place. Here the sister was gang raped for a week.

Excerpt: Liberal Chick is back and is singing the praises of Rachel Jeantel the prosecution’s star witness in the George Zimmerman trial. (Liberal chick is "like' the greatest "like" spokesperson/poster-child for 'like" the liberals ~ JB).

Excerpt: The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service, headed by a political appointee of President Obama, helped develop the agency’s problematic guidelines for reviewing “tea party” cases, according to a top IRS attorney. In interviews with congressional investigators, IRS lawyer Carter Hull said his superiors told him that the chief counsel’s office, led by William Wilkins, would need to review some of the first applications the agency screened for additional scrutiny because of potential political activity.

Excerpt: Today, because she voted illegally in the name of others, including one who was in a coma, she was sentenced five years in prison. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman could have imposed the maximum prison sentence of six years after Richardson was convicted in May of four counts of illegal voting in exchange for prosecutors dropping four other charges.